- A new report by Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV) states that Casino Group’s beef supply chain could be linked to up to 526,459 hectares (about 1.3 million acres) of deforestation in Brazil between 2018 and 2023.
- The data are being used in a $64.1 million lawsuit filed in 2021 by environmental and Indigenous groups that accuse the French retailer of contributing to illegal deforestation.
- Among the plaintiffs are Indigenous communities from the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau territory in the Brazilian Amazon that have faced decades of land invasions by illegal cattle ranchers.
A recent report by the nonprofit Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV) found that the operations of French retailer Casino Group in Brazil could be linked to more than half a million hectares of deforestation between 2018 and 2023. According to ICV, 526,459 hectares (approximately 1.3 million acres) of native vegetation — an area about 50 times the size of Paris — was cleared largely in the Amazon Rainforest to raise cattle for the company’s beef supply chain.
The findings are the latest in a series of deforestation allegations against the French retailer in Latin America, where it operated more than 3,000 grocery stores until recently. In 2021, a coalition of 11 Colombian and Brazilian environmental and Indigenous organizations sued Casino Group in France for environmental damage and human rights violations. The case remains ongoing in the Paris courts.
Raquel Carvalho, author of the ICV report, told Mongabay that it took a year to uncover the new data. “There’s great difficulty in measuring the deforestation caused by beef sold in grocery stores,” she said. “The main challenge is the lack of traceability between cattle suppliers and these stores. We have animal transport documents that track cattle from ranches to slaughterhouses, but the paper trail ends there.”
Researchers worked around this challenge by calculating the total beef traded by two Casino-owned retail chains in Brazil and estimating the amount of new pasture required to produce this beef, using data from Brazilian research collective MapBiomas. The method relies on the premise that every year, local cattle suppliers convert large swaths of native vegetation into pasture for grazing.
This is especially true in the Amazon biome, where the report estimates that Casino’s beef supply chain is linked to 327,791 hectares (809,989 acres) of deforestation. In the Cerrado, the ICV estimates a loss of 99,212 hectares (245,158 acres) of forests and savannas. “Extensive livestock farming remains dominant in the region,” Carvalho explained. “Since restoring pastureland is neither easy nor cheap, ranchers will move cattle in, wait for the pasture to degrade and move them to a new area.”
According to the investigation, the demand for beef directly influenced how much pastureland was cleared each year. Historical data indicate that 1 hectare (2.5 acres) of pasture yields approximately 60 kilograms (132 pounds) of carcass-equivalent beef. This means that in 2023, when Casino beef sales were at their lowest, suppliers would have required approximately 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of pasture. When sales peaked in 2019, they would have needed around 7.6 million hectares (18.7 million acres).
Researchers had access to limited data from Casino. They used the revenue percentage of the entire butchery section provided by the Brazilian Association of Retailers (ABRAS) to estimate the volume of beef traded. “More transparency would not only allow us to improve these estimates but also expand the analysis to better understand the regional patterns of these retailers,” Carvalho said.
Mounting legal pressure in the French courts
Sébastien Mabile, the attorney representing the coalition suing Casino, told Mongabay the new data will be crucial to make their case. “We’ve already included this evidence in our pretrial brief and are now awaiting Casino’s response.”
The case, set to go to trial in 2026, is based on France’s Duty of Vigilance Law that went into effect in 2017. The legislation requires that most French companies work to prevent risks to “severe violations of human rights,” “environmental damage” and “health.” The law’s scope includes not only the operations of these companies but also their subcontractors and suppliers.
The coalition initially demanded that Casino’s grocery chains, Grupo Pão de Açúcar (GPA) in Brazil and Exito in Colombia, implement measures to prevent deforestation. However, Casino has since largely exited both countries following a major corporate restructuring. It now holds only a 22% stake in GPA, which is actively seeking to sell.
With Casino no longer operating in Latin America, the coalition was forced to change its legal strategy. “We cannot ask them for what they don’t have anymore,” Mabile said. The case now focuses on securing reparations for the plaintiffs, totaling $64.1 million. According to the lawyer, almost half of that amount (43%) would go to the Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, which represents more than 180 Indigenous groups.
Mabile hopes a victory will also set a precedent for holding large foreign companies accountable for deforestation in the Amazon. “The judge will determine the scope of a French company’s duty of vigilance — whether it extends only to direct suppliers or encompasses the entire global supply chain,” he explained.
In response to a request for comment, the Casino Group’s communication department stated that “Casino has consistently exercised the highest standards of diligence in its operations in Brazil and Colombia, particularly with respect to human rights and environmental protection, with a specific focus on addressing deforestation” and that “this will be demonstrated in the course of the pending proceedings.” The group’s lawyers did not respond to questions regarding the legal case.
Baptiste Vicard, advocacy officer for Envol Vert, the French organization coordinating the coalition, said he believes that despite setbacks, the lawsuit has already inspired positive change. “At one of our events, a representative from another major retailer told me that the trial pressured their management to obtain more resources to fight deforestation,” Vicard told Mongabay. “This is what we want. We want to use this pressure to encourage large retailers to change their practices.”
The human cost of deforestation
The Indigenous communities living in the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Territory are among the groups directly impacted by deforestation linked to the Casino Group.
Since 1991, this territory in Rondônia, Brazil, has been formally recognized by the federal government as belonging to the Jupaú, Amondawa and Oro Win peoples as well as five Indigenous groups living in isolation. Yet, more than 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres) of this protected land have already been cleared — 66% for cattle ranching, according to the Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA), a nonprofit organization.
The NGO, which specializes in investigating environmental crimes, cross-referenced data from Brazil’s Rural Environmental Registry and animal transport records in the region. They identified that cattle raised on the Indigenous land were being sold to regional meatpacking plants operated by JBS, a supplier to the Casino Group.
“We were able to identify a clear cattle laundering system, which is a common practice in Brazil,” said Bruno Martins Morais, program director at CCCA. “Ranchers raise cattle on Indigenous land, then move them to farms outside of the protected territory before selling them to meatpacking plants.”
For Morais, the fact that researchers were able to uncover these links is evidence that Casino Group has access to the same information. “If we were able to identify these illegal farms, surely they could too,” he said. “They must have seen these suppliers operating inside Indigenous land, but took no action to cut them from their supply chain.”
The CCCA estimated the resulting loss of forest inside the Indigenous territory cost communities more than $140 million in damages. Following a report published in 2022, these communities decided to join the coalition suing Casino and are now seeking around $10 million in reparations.
Bitaté Uru Eu Wau Wau, a local Indigenous leader, told Mongabay via phone that if the lawsuit is successful, the money would be used for programs protecting the group’s culture that is threatened by deforestation.
“Because cattle are taking over our land, it’s getting harder and harder to hunt, fish and practice our culture,” he said. “My father says that near the heavily invaded area of Burareiro used to be a great hunting ground, full of animals. But now, if you go there, you find almost nothing. It’s a wasted trip. All you see is fires, the sound of chainsaws and tractors.”
For Henri Thulliez, the lawyer representing the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau communities in the trial, their involvement in the case is crucial to humanizing the coalition’s legal fight. “The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau are among the last defenders of nature,” he said. “We cannot tolerate a situation where multinational corporations profit from the destruction of their land.”
But the benefits of a victory could extend far beyond the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau. “It would be groundbreaking for a French judge to acknowledge Indigenous people as an injured party,” he explained. “The French courts have never really handled a case about the damages suffered by an Indigenous people in their entirety. Their legal status doesn’t even exist under French law.”
Banner image: Illegal cattle farm inside the Indigenous territory Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau in Burareiro, Rondônia, Brazil, in 2021. Image courtesy of Casino Case coalition.
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